


Only To Find I've Come Alive

by skullage



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullage/pseuds/skullage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a story about waking up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only To Find I've Come Alive

_like a song of love that clings to me, how the thought of you does things to me_

Harry finds quiet moments for himself in a chaotic world. His post-X Factor life is more the scene of a post-apocalyptic drama which advertises his every private moment to the world, the screaming millions and reporters out for his blood. He finds solitude. He finds himself lost in music. Mostly, Louis finds him, and brings him back to the noise. 

~

Harry's hands shake too much, skin stretched to the point of breaking his knuckles bloody, veins popping and snapping out of key. When he moves he creaks, carburettor voice, too rusty to be of use. Louis chides him his complaints, rubs the aching muscles in his back, tells him that he's always been too old for his age, what are we going to do with you Benjamin Button? 

Every time it makes Harry's chest tighten and his heart stop beating long enough for time to matter. The minute it takes for Louis to turn and catch his gaze. The half hour-long interview that ages Harry twenty years. Each breath that could be the last one he and Louis take together. Louis covers Harry's hands with his own and for one whole, tangible minute, Harry stops shaking. 

 

_but maybe i'm just in love when you wake me up_

He never considered his childhood sheltered but most mornings he wakes feeling as though he knows so little about his world. It's scary, and exhilarating, and it leaves him out of breath. Louis has an espresso waiting for him when Harry makes it downstairs and they drink in silence until Harry's voice returns, and it's just the two of them slowly coming into existence again. Louis makes him a proper coffee and ruffles his sleep-soft hair and Harry hates that he mentions it, his fear, but Louis just listens with his head cocked to the side and the way he answers makes Harry love him that much more. 

~

Louis takes him to enough museums and pubs and clubs and concerts and car dealerships and alleyways and house parties and art galleries and foreign cinemas that Harry stops waking up afraid. He wakes up new, instead. Harry talks to the people Louis introduces him to (always "this is my roommate", followed by a wink); he learns stories, names, histories. He bursts with culture and identity. He meets Louis's grandmother and she tells him to watch out for the restless girls, the hungry girls, _the ones that turn into women with eyes like bullet holes_. Louis catches his eye and Harry hides his grin with his mug of tea. Doesn't reassure her that he'll watch out for himself, because Louis voices it for him, the way he's always watched out for Harry. Echoes of their own history diluted by the years, reinforced by Louis's hand reaching for his beneath the table, and Harry's reaching right back. 

 

_i want to wake up and know where i'm going, say i'm ready, say i'm ready_

In this way it's decided:

Eleanor moves her stuff out. Toothbrush, one bag of clothes, the Paul Frank alarm clock. She takes the curtains with her, but Harry doesn't raise an objection at the way the early-morning sunlight shines unfiltered into Louis's bedroom and lights up his unblemished skin. When she goes, she takes something of Louis with her, something that used to make his eyes narrow and his retorts all that much more vicious, that much more personal. 

(Harry sends her a thank-you note that reads, "Curtains were hideous. Hope you enjoy them more than we did.")

Harry crawls into Louis's bed and it still smells of her, after two weeks of washed sheets and this side left empty, the side that Harry now fills, lies in until she's just a memory that Louis stops curling himself around at night. In the mornings he watches Louis's skin glow golden and his eyes return to clear white and blue and just listens to him breathe evenly. 

Louis doesn't say much in those first few weeks but underneath his words Harry hears it like a heartbeat: the fear of his world that wakes him up. 

They stay in the apartment, because, like his energy, Louis's apathy is infectious. Not for the first time Harry wonders if it's toxic, this dependency they have on each other, if maybe it will turn xenophobic and leave them unwilling, unable, to let anyone else in.

(A reply comes, two weeks later. "You're close to him in a way I never could be. You love him enough for all three of us. No one can compete with that.")

Harry makes grilled cheese toasties and they watch old sci-fi movies in their matching onesies and gradually Louis loses the part of himself that grieves his inability to love Eleanor. He wakes up new, every day, and that, too, is infectious. 

 

_and i sang oh, what do i do, what do i do, what do i do? what do i do without you?_

Harry wakes from a doze, shaken by the movement of Louis's shoulders wrecking, muffled sobs into Harry's shoulder that soak his shirt, wet his skin. Immediately he tightens his arm around Louis's back and pulls him closer, pulls him until they're lying back on the couch pressed chest-to-chest and face-to-shoulder and knees between knees. Pulling at the places Louis unravels until they fit together. For the longest time Harry holds him, runs fingers through his split ends, pushes hands underneath Louis's unwashed t-shirt to get to his skin. 

Harry doesn't say that it'll get better. This, what they have now, this feeling that picks Louis's loose ends apart and cripples him, the saw blade that cleaves Harry's chest wide open, it's already better. The awkward shuffle around each other's new boundaries and careful conversation at the breakfast table is better than the distance they wouldn't let themselves cross made manifest. It's a spiteful thing, to think of Eleanor as just the reason they gave each other for separate beds, as just an excuse not to reach out and ruin what they have with recklessness, but she left, and Harry's still here. 

Harry's the one that reminds Louis to take a shower in the morning and washes his clothes and makes his meals and sews him back together with pieces of their shared history and pulls Eleanor's note out of Louis's clenched fist. Harry's the one cupping Louis's face, wet with tears, bringing it close to his own until their noses touch, their foreheads pressed together. Harry's the one with Louis's backtracking, broken heart in his hands, wrapping Louis in cotton wool and kissing the bruises better each time he falls. 

 

_everybody thinks that i'm the fool, but they don't get any love from you_

They stop waking up afraid. They start waking up next to each other, instead.


End file.
